Hebridean Celtic Festival 2007

24 Jul 2007 in Festival, Music, Outer Hebrides

Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, 11-14 July 2007

Irish legends, Moving Hearts.

NOT SO very long ago, the concept of Stornoway en fête would have seemed a peculiarly Scottish oxymoron. Being the hub of Free Presbyterianism’s doughtiest remaining bastion, the Western Isles’ capital wasn’t exactly renowned as a destination for fun.

Now, though, for a few days each July, the hedonistic buzz on the bunting-decked street is instantly palpable, even arriving with the advance guard off the Wednesday ferry, for the opening night of the Hebridean Celtic Festival.

With a total audience this year in the region of 15,000 – including a hefty local contingent – Stornoway’s population pretty much doubles for the duration: nigh-on every bed in town is booked up weeks in advance. Visitors are drawn from far and wide by a combination of world-class music (both home-grown and local), island remoteness, and a setting rich in natural and historical treasures.

It’s a big ask, nonetheless, getting people to travel all that way, especially in these days of ever-increasing competition from other Scottish festivals, and the Heb Celt’s continuing success bears witness to its organisers’ skill and judgement in making the experience so addictive.

The warmest of Hebridean welcomes is underpinned by carefully cultivated support from local businesses, be they pubs or craft-shops or car-hire firms, all of whom share in the dividends brought by a free-spending festival crowd. Among the various street performers dodging the showers around Stornoway over the weekend, there was even a pair of Christian buskers, giving praise for the happiness so abundantly in evidence.

There’s apparently been some debate of late as to whether the festival should drop the “Celtic” from its name, and broaden its programming to include more mainstream acts. While the desire among its younger indigenous audience to see more of their favourite bands come to Lewis is understandable, it’s not as if the event currently struggles to attract this age-group; far from it.

More importantly, though, it’s the Celtic element that underpins Lewis’s role not merely as a festival site for a bunch of concerts that could equally well be staged elsewhere, but as an actively participatory host, whose own living traditions vitally inform and shape the event, and are thereby connected to their cultural cousins around the world.

This core aspect of the Heb Celt’s identity was powerfully exemplified by Wednesday’s opening concert at An Lanntair. Dhachaigh! (“Home”) was a specially-commissioned tribute marking 25 years since the death of the great Lewis bard Murchadh MacPhàrlain (Murdo MacFarlane), whose work is more widely embedded in today’s Gaelic canon than that of any other author.

Backed by supplementary funding from Highland 2007 and Bòrd Na Gàidhlig, the performance lined up five leading exponents of Gaelic song – Lewis natives Ishbel MacAskill, Christine Primrose, Calum Alex MacMillan and Fiona Mackenzie, plus Irish-born Brian Ó hEadhra – alongside fiddlers Aidan O’Rourke and Alasdair White, Fraser Fifield on whistles and soprano sax, and Ó hEadhra also playing guitar.

Both halves of the show opened with a stirringly evocative musical and visual collage by Paul Mounsey, the Brazilian-based Scottish composer and experimentalist, projecting snapshots of Lewis life and landscapes from yesteryear to the present over a recorded aural backdrop of ambient electronica, folk-based melodies and snatches of MacFarlane’s poetry.

Also created especially for the occasion was Fifield’s stunning arrangement of “Tobair, Tobair, Sìolaidh” (“Well, Well, Flow”), the bard’s prayer for rain during dry summers [doubtless the irony will not have been lost on the locals in this far from dry specimin – Ed.], interweaving MacMillan’s resonant vocals with an eerie, whistle-based backing track and live sax improvisation to brilliantly dramatic effect, at once wild and ritualistic.

The jazz influences contributed by Fifield were subtly picked up by other aspects of the performances, as with the sensual bluesy inflections that enriched MacAskill’s lower register in her opening a capella rendition of “An Ataireachd Ard,” (“The Swelling of the Sea”).

Mackenzie’s exquisitely bittersweet soprano in the pastoral ode “Gleann Gollaidh” (“Glen Golly”), meanwhile, was vividly reminiscent of traditional Appalachian singing, in a further pointer to Gaelic song’s transatlantic connections.

Both these songs were among those by other writers chosen to complement MacFarlane’s work, all elaborating on this year’s festival theme of homecoming, in an adroitly varied mixed of solo and ensemble numbers, some featuring voice alone, others imaginatively accompanied by the band.

Other standouts included MacAskill singing MacFarlane’s heartrending World War I lament “Naoi Ceud Deug `Sa Caithir Deug” (“Nineteen Hundred and Fourteen”), and Mackenzie’s impassioned leading of Lewis’s “national anthem”, “Eilean Fraoich” (“Heather Isle”). For those not fortunate to be present for its premiere, there are moves afoot to tour the show, and hopefully to record it.

While the biggest draw on this year’s Heb Celt bill was undoubtedly the Proclaimers, of whom more later, the biggest coup was securing the sole UK festival date by Irish legends Moving Hearts, following their reunion shows in Dublin back in February, the latest in only a handful of occasions when they’ve reconvened since parting ways in 1984.

The Hearts’ trailblazing swansong, of course, was the all-instrumental album ‘The Storm’, material from which formed the basis of this year’s performances, featuring Donal Lunny (bouzouki), Davy Spillane (uilleann pipes/whistles), Keith Donald (saxophones) Eoghan O’Neill (bass) and Noel Eccles (percussion) from the original cast. Completing a truly powerhouse line-up, at Thursday’s opening show in the festival’s main tented arena, were Kevin Glackin (fiddle), Anto Drennan (guitar), Graham Henderson (keyboards) and Liam Bradley (drums).

“Seminal” is a much overused word, but listening to the band’s big, multi-textured, polyrhythmic sound, it was immediately obvious how they paved the way for Capercaillie, Mike McGoldrick and other contemporary Celtic acts, splicing traditional-style tunes with assertive jazz, rock and funk stylings in a manner that still sounded fresh and vital, while once again underlining its revelatory impact first time around.

The night’s opening act, Berrogüetto, also turned in a fine performance, bringing the sunny, spicy, splendidly strutting sounds of 21st century Galicia to an appreciative Heb Celt crowd, alternating intricately layered tune sets with the superbly commanding voice of lead singer Gaudi Galego.

Friday night may have marked the Proclaimers’ debut appearance at the festival, but the homecoming theme was nonetheless unmistakably apt at an emotional level, as a euphoric welcoming roar affirmed their place in the audience’s hearts. The Reid brothers returned the favour with a thrillingly heartfelt performance, featuring a mix of mass-singalong classics and newer material, tautly backed by a punchy four-piece band.

The sheer craft and calibre of the Proclaimers’ songwriting always shines through mostly clearly live, along with the power and precision of their closely-twinned vocals. The two-way cultural relationship addressed in their very first hit, “Letter From America”, with which they opened the set, has remained a bedrock of their music, with vintage Stateside influences often prominent again here, from doo-wop to Motown, seasoned in true Scottish style with equal parts salt and wry pawkiness.

The pre-gig anticipation, even by the Heb Celt’s enthusiastic standards, was sky-high, but rarely have I witnessed a crowd so rapturously satisfied.

The final night’s support act, Oojami, cooked up a positively global melting-pot of upfront dance sounds, in the process going down as many listeners’ favourite festival discovery. The group’s Turkish-born founder and frontman Necmi Cavli, now based in London as a DJ, draws on influences as diverse as Arabic folk, Sufi devotional music and Celtic fiddle tunes, as well as ska, reggae and clubland grooves, with costumed dancers adding a flamboyant visual dimension to the show.

Rounding off yet another magical Heb Celt weekend in the big blue tent, Skye’s Peatbog Faeries celebrated the release of their fifth album, ‘What Men Deserve to Lose’, with a set that was by turns majestic and rumbustious, blissed-out and brooding, mesmerising and mighty.

The three-piece brass section, headed by ex-Elton John cohort Rick Taylor on trombone, and now a permanent feature of their live line-up, lent their already widescreen sound yet more layers of colour and depth, around the dynamic sparring partnership of fiddler Adam Sutherland and Peter Morrison on pipes and whistles, emphatically but nimbly backed by the heavy-duty rhythm team of bassist Innes Hutton and drummer Iain Copeland.

With a similarly successful An Lanntair programme including excellent performances by Lau, Quebecois trio Genticorum and Shetland fiddler Jenna Reid, and the late-night Festival Club thronged throughout till the wee hours, few if anyone noticed that this year’s festival Friday fell on the 13th. And even though the same supposedly ill-starred number will attach to the next Heb Celt, the event’s prospects – based on achievements thus far – could scarcely be brighter.

© Sue Wilson, 2007

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